Hundreds, All Nonunion, Walk Out at Pork Plant

[Leo]

Hundreds, All Nonunion, Walk Out at Pork Plant in N.C.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/us/17wal...gin&oref=slogin (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/us/17walkout.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin)

In a move highly unusual for nonunion workers, more than 500 employees walked out yesterday at the Smithfield Packing Company’s hog-killing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., the largest pork-processing plant in the world.

Workers involved in the walkout said it was fueled by anger over Smithfield’s recent decision to fire several dozen immigrants who the company said had presented false Social Security numbers in applying for a job.

Several of the workers said their action had largely crippled production at the plant, which employs 5,500 people and slaughters 32,000 hogs a day. But Smithfield officials said production had merely been slowed a little.

The walkout coincided with a big push by the United Food and Commercial Workers to unionize the Smithfield employees in Tar Heel, about two-thirds of them Hispanic immigrants. A number of workers said the discontent stemmed not just from the recent firings but also from brusque treatment, the speed of the production line and widespread injuries.

“They were tired of the working conditions,” said Gene Bruskin, director of the union’s organizing drive. “They want a permanent solution to the problems there.”

Mr. Bruskin said the walkout had been organized by the plant’s immigrant workers and not by the union. But Dennis Pittman, a Smithfield spokesman, maintained that it had been carried out in close cooperation with the union, as a way of pressuring the company to halt its fight against organizing efforts.

Mr. Pittman said 350 workers had walked out during the morning shift, and 200 during the afternoon shift. But several employees involved put the number at about 700 on the morning shift and some 500 on the afternoon shift.

Several weeks ago Smithfield Packing, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods Inc., sent hundreds of workers “no-match letters,” notifying them that the name and Social Security number they had given the company did not match records of the Social Security Administration. In recent days, the company began firing those who were unable to explain the discrepancies.

Eduardo Pena, an organizer for the union, said some of the letters had gone to employees who had valid Social Security numbers, and several workers said yesterday that they would not return to work until Smithfield pledged not to fire any more immigrants over the issue.

But the government has threatened to fine companies that knowingly continue to employ illegal immigrants, and Mr. Pittman said: “If Smithfield were to do what the union is calling for, we would be breaking federal law by knowingly employing undocumented workers. The union should stop trying to pressure Smithfield to break the law.”

One of those engaged in the walkout, Keith Ludlum, who is paid $11 an hour to herd hogs to slaughter, said the workers were concerned about far more than the immigration matter.

“They’re asking for the company to allow us to have a union contract,” Mr. Ludlum said, “and to respect workers’ rights and to respect workers in general.”

Hundreds of workers milled in front of the plant for much of the day. In an effort to ease the dispute and restore full operations there, the workers’ leaders and Smithfield officials exchanged tense, on-again, off-again feelers.

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What are your thoughts?

[Reuben]

this is very good news. it demonstrates that even without unionisation capitalist relations of production provide the *objective* basis for class struggle. THis is not to say that there is no point in unionisng to make these efforts sustained and orgnaniused. What it does mean though is that we absolutely shouldnt mistqake the current lull in militant trade unionism for the end of the class struggle - something that will exist as long as capitalism.


reuben

[Severian]

Holy crap! Smithfield! Excellent!

As the article says, it's a huge plant, the biggest anywhere. It's the size of a town, with its own company-employed cops.

Obviously the company's firing these immigrant workers as retaliation for their support for the organizing drive. Smithfield's been super-exploiting immigrant workers for years, and you can work there with the flimsiest of legal-fiction documents.

I've heard, from someone who worked there, that people get fired and come back under another name and different social security number - where obviously the bosses know it's the same person.

And undocumented workers have little legal recourse if fired for supporting a unionization effort. The Supreme Court's ruled that they can't win reinstatement in the courts, since they can't be legally employed - and they can't even get back pay, either!

But that hasn't stopped immigrant workers from supporting unionization efforts - more often than U.S.-born workers, statistically. It just means they have to seek other means of resisting firings - like, in this case, striking.

It's also significant that U.S.-born workers, like Keith Ludlum quoted in the article, joined the walkout. IIRC most of the U.S.-born workers in this plant are Black.

The fight to unionize the plant - and to resist company and police attacks on workers - has been going on for years. (In the U.S., it commonly takes multiple elections before a majority shake off company intimidation and vote for union representation.) There have been job actions before - but this seems like the biggest one so far.

2005 - Meatpackers fight for union at Smithfield (http://www.themilitant.com/2005/6922/692252.html)

There have been many other cases where immigrant workers fighting for a union have organized walkouts and job actions; at the Co-op mine in Utah for example. (http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6734/673403.html) or Long Prairie Packing in Minnesota (http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6523/652302.html)

In both cases immigration cops and immigration law was used against the workers. At Long Prairie workers ultimately succeeded in unionizing the plant; at the Co-op mine, they didn't.

[Severian]

Update: The Militant had an article about this - apparently the workers won some of their demands.

Pretty clearly it was misleading for the NY Times to describe these workers as nonunion, since they are fighting to get union recognition in the plant.

Workers walk out at N. Carolina meat plant
1,000 protest 'no-match' letters, firing threats

BY SETH DELLINGER
TAR HEEL, North Carolina— Some 1,000 workers walked off the job November 16-17 at the Smithfield Foods plant here, the largest hog-slaughter facility in the world. The walkout was sparked by the company’s firing of several dozen employees it claimed were working with false papers. It ended when the company announced that it would not penalize those who joined the walkout, that the fired workers could return to their jobs, and that they would have more time to clarify their immigration status.

For more than a decade, workers at this plant have been involved in efforts to organize into the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. The facility employs 5,000 workers and slaughters up to 32,000 hogs a day.

Leading up to the protest, workers told the Militant, Smithfield had sent notices, known as “no-match” letters, to hundreds of employees saying their names and Social Security numbers did not match federal records. Workers were given 14 days to resolve the discrepancy. Firings began as the deadline came due.

On the Monday before the protest, “the company started pulling people into the office,” a packing line worker said in an interview. “They were firing people on the spot. Every day it was more. On Thursday morning, suddenly we noticed that hardly any boxes were coming down the line. On the radios they were shouting 'They're walking off the line!' The supervisors were frantic—they couldn’t believe it.

“When I went on break, the parking lot was really crowded with people. It was truly a beautiful thing the way they united,” said the worker, a Black woman in her early 20s. Like other workers interviewed, she asked that her name not be used “because right now we’re fighting for the union.”

Roberto, a Mexican-born worker, said he was working on the kill floor when the protest started. "Nothing was coming down the line, so I asked around what was going on. The guys who unload the trucks said, 'We're not working, we're walking out.' So I walked out too," he said.

Hundreds of workers gathered outside the plant, chanting in Spanish ¡Queremos justicia! (“We want justice!”) and ¡Sí se puede! (“Yes we can!”) Workers leading the walkout issued a statement demanding “No retaliation now or in the future for any worker participating in the fight for justice at Smithfield, including but not limited to points, demotion, or termination.” It also called for “an end to the unjust firing of Smithfield workers and the timely rehire of all workers who have been unfairly terminated.”

Consuelo, a meat cutter on the night shift, was at home when the walkout began. On hearing the news she joined the protest. She said in an interview that she was glad to see UFCW organizers outside the plant because “they say they will support us.”

When the afternoon shift arrived, several hundred more joined the protest instead of going into work. While the majority of those refusing to work were Latin American immigrants, some Black and other U.S.-born workers participated as well.

The following day, November 17, hundreds of workers protested again outside the plant. By the end of the day, Smithfield agreed to discuss the workers’ grievances with representatives of the Catholic Church. Workers returned to the job Saturday.

According to a November 18 UFCW press release, the company agreed “to increase the time allowed for employees to respond to ‘no match’ letters,” that “employees who have been laid off for failure to resolve Social Security issues may return to work while they sort out these issues,” and that “no disciplinary actions of any kind will be taken against those employees who participated in the walkout.”

Smithfield plant manager Larry Johnson agreed to meet November 21 with a delegation elected by the workers.

The press release reported that the North Carolina NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other religious and civil rights groups backed the workers’ demands.

Also fueling the anger of workers is the high injury rate due to job conditions and the abusive treatment by bosses. These issues have been at the heart of an ongoing campaign by the UFCW to organize the Tar Heel plant.

Keith Ludlum, a union supporter who herds hogs off the truck and to the kill floor, told The Robesonian, a local daily, that there is “no way an employee can [work] here very long without receiving permanent damage to their body and their joints."

Workers report that a common cause of injury is using dull knives. Gene Bruskin, UFCW director of the Smithfield Justice campaign, told the press that in August workers circulated a petition in Spanish asking to be issued a second knife.

María, a 10-year veteran in the plant, told the Militant a supervisor had called her “lazy” and tried to get her fired. “But I’m a hard worker,” said María, who successfully challenged the victimization attempt. Then the boss “brought a pallet over with 10 boxes of meat that wasn’t cut right and said it was my fault and I would have to pay for it. In the end, I didn’t have to pay for the meat, but she kicked me out of the department. In my new job I only got 28 hours, which isn’t enough, because I have a young son to feed.”

Workers’ efforts to organize the Tar Heel plant go back more than a decade. Union elections were held in both 1994 and 1997 amid widespread company harassment and intimidation, including beatings and arrests of union supporters. Although the UFCW lost both times, a federal appeals court ruling this year stated that Smithfield repeatedly broke the law during the two elections.

link (http://www.themilitant.com/2006/7046/index.shtml)